Author Archives: Tata

I Can’t Feed On the Powerless

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On a spring day, a young instigator’s mind turns to registering dissatisfaction with the status quo, and foliage. I started writing letters about this constuction project two years ago. Some months back, I wrote to one of the unnamed university’s urban planners about the time it was taking to finish a relatively simple paving project on Route 27 under Route 18. The urban planner, evidently uncomfortable with the words corruption and visible to any idiot assured me stiffly that the project would be finished in April of 2009. In the meantime, this corridor was closed for a weekend during which about half a day’s work was done, and since October, on few occasions have workers attended the traffic cones, displaced lanes and construction signs. This project is going nowhere fast.

Longtime readers of Poor Impulse Control may recall that my mouth has the power to move mountains, and so it would be effortless to imagine that someone, deep in bowels of the New Jersey Department of Transportation, has heard my piteous mewling and decided to punish commuters on two major roadways, possibly for a year or more. Though I am indeed a special snowflake, let us resist this blizzard scenario. For one thing, because New Jersey is rife with corruption we can all see and for the most part expect. Sometimes, we even benefit from it. If we were to accept that my protests changed the pace at which this project was being completed we would have to attribute to me the power to piss off corrupt officials. That is too much to believe. So this must be some professional-grade incompetence at work. Impressive, isn’t it?

As I’ve also mentioned before, the two buildings in the distance in that last picture were designed by I.M. Pei in what can only have been the most desperate moment of an otherwise interesting career. The building on the left is the Hyatt. No one can afford to stay there except guests of Johnson & Johnson and you see people with little wheelie suitcases crossing Route 27 and tripping bicyclists all the time. It’s like a video game with lacerations and credit card reward points. I took these three pictures walking on the Albany Street Bridge toward New Brunswick, and on this picture I looked over the side. That asphalt is new and those street lights are puzzling. Right now, they light the homeless, who live under the bridge I’m standing on. The street lights are a portent of something we’ve all wondered about: what are they doing with the river front? It doesn’t take a genius to know that when the river rises those lights will be halfway under water, along with the luxury housing on the other side of Route 18. It’s a flood plain.

Last September, I photographed this corridor. It’s changed somewhat. This stretch is so bad for bikers I can’t picture riding to work until it’s fixed. The other side of the road was fixed in a somewhat conventional sense but I still wouldn’t let my worst enemy out on that side of the road.* The best thing on that side of the road is when cars fly off the Route 18 ramp and come to a screeching halt because cars exiting Route 27 have the right of way and really bad attitudes. As a pedestrian, I want to get right in the middle of that.

I do like that my shadow resembles that of a giant squid. I feel underdressed without tentacles.

These spots are very close together, but shadows deceive. Two people my size could not walk side by side on this path and people who meet must negotiate their passing. There’s a second aspect to this: the grade. Under the overpass, water pools. It’s rained off and on for more than a week. Where there’s dirt it’s all mud, and dirt is everywhere. People walk this pushing baby carriages. I hate to think of them crossing paths with the seemingly endless parade of young men cycling to jobs in every kind of weather.

In the center of this picture looking back behind me you can’t see where old pavement was cut and new pavement now sits almost a foot lower because I am a sub-par photographer. When a rain cloud forms, people turn truly stupid on this very spot. They drive right into a pool of pooling water and sit there, waiting for the light on the other side of the bridge to turn green. That light is at least 100 yards away and not visible from this spot. I wonder if this spot was engineered with the blessing of towing companies, or perhaps it’s a municipal fundraiser.

Truly, the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. This spot is actually getting worse. It’s really hard to negotiate this place between the overpass and the Hyatt without getting muddy. When I attain the traffic light ahead, I know that it’s 100% certain that I’m as muddy as I’m going to get, barring a sudden altercation with corporate landscapers. Which could happen. Possibly. Even though it never has. Anyhow, I compared the images from last September and these and I was actually surprised that anything had changed. There’s still a light that tells pedestrians to go but no light to arrest vehicular traffic, but apparently the Department of Transportation considers a few high-speed maulings the price of doing business.

This project could have been finished easily in a matter of months. Instead, it’s dirty, dangerous and will probably go on for as long as possible. Even the mob would be embarrassed.

*She is still SUCH a BITCH.

The Bad Times Are Clean Washed

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On the advice of the physical therapist, I started slowly.

Wednesday, I Pete drove me to work and I walked home. My steps were smooth and even. I had no pain to speak of, and I climbed the long, steep hill into town with surprising ease. This small triumph inspired a new goal; today I walked to and from work. This morning, sunlight bathed the streets in ways I’d never noticed before. Not far from my house, I turned back to look for cars and saw rays of light form a huge, coursing stream coming straight at me. I half-heartedly fumbled for the camera, knowing I’m not the kind of photographer who could capture that. I’m not much of a photographer at all. When I took this picture of dew on the lawn in front of Johnson & Johnson’s Interplanetary Headquarters, I knew it was silly, and naive, and cliched, but I couldn’t not do it. I could not contain my joy.

She Was Dark At the Top Of the Stairs

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Library of Halexandria:

The earliest representations of Lilith seem to be as a great winged Bird Goddess, a wind spirit, or one associated with the Sumerian, Ninlil, Goddess of the Grain, and wife to Enlil. As the “hand of Inanna”, Lilith was notorious for bringing men from the street and fields of war to Inanna’s temple for holy sexual rites, in which the intention was to civilize the people. The sacred sexual customs were, in fact, considered the greatest gift of Inanna.

As Adam’s first wife, however, Lilith really got into trouble with the patriarchy. She had the audacity to want to be treated as Adam’s equal. According to Hebrew mythology, the Babylonian Talmud, the Zohar, and the Alphabet of Ben Sira, Lilith refused to lie below Adam, and thus set the archetypal example for later feminists. God allegedly threatened her by decreeing if she did not submit to Adam, that “one hundred of her children would die every day.” Lilith chose exile.

Which really got Adam’s goat! Despite being ostensibly happy about having Lilith out of his life (and later blessed with a subservient, if not occasionally misguided Eve), Adam apparently never gave up resenting Lilith for having chosen exile to being with him. Not a lot has changed in thousands upon thousands of years: A woman deciding her life is better alone than with a particular man is still the height of insult to that male.

The male patriarchal traditions, therefore portrayed the situation as one in which the first woman on Earth, who was created equal to man and a free spirit to boot, would be condemned to survive for eternity as a she-devil, mating with demons and devils and bearing monsters instead of human children. “This image was to serve as a threat and warning to any woman who might consider leaving her husband or defying male authority.” [1]

But it was all to no avail.

Lilith by John Collier.

Women put up with a lot of shit every day, a goodly amount of which is so normalized few bother to mention it. Two days ago, men in my department, whom I would describe as reasonably harmless, were talking and I made a suggestion. Another woman drew near and made a suggestion. The men talked over us. I walked away. She followed me and asked if I felt brushed off. I said I would refuse to discuss the project further. Later, one of the men came to my desk and asked a rhetorical question. I said that because he didn’t actually listen to me I wouldn’t discuss this project anymore – and he kept talking. I said no, I wouldn’t discuss this further and again he kept talking. The third time he finally got the message that we shouldn’t converse. Perhaps it was the gesture I used. The reason I mention this is because it’s so ordinary for men or a man to talk over women that it’s barely worth a mention, like this conversation.

Tata: I want to be the little old lady on a shiny Vespa.
Guy: No, what you want to be is…

Apparently I’m so impressionable that men who are not me know what I want better than I do. Don’t be surprised. It is a common conversational event, barely worth a mention. It will happen wherever men and women gather, and only women will notice.

Daily Contributor:

WFSB-TV in Hartford reported [Johanna] Justin-Jinich’s boyfriend entered about 1 p.m. local time carrying a gun and wearing a wig that also was left behind, the station said.

Yesterday, a man walked into a bookstore and shot a woman point-blank. His intention was to kill her and he succeeded. The Daily Contributor, as tepid a name as any, reported online and still reports as of this writing, that the murderer was her boyfriend. We expect that. It’s so common we barely notice. These two people were not engaged in a relationship, however. He stalked her. According to NBC News while I was bicycling this morning, she’d filed at least one complaint. Yesterday, he killed her. The Hartford Courant article chooses neutral words very carefully.

“She’s a really loyal friend; a really loving, passionate person about life and about her friends and family,” [Leah] Lucid said of her friend, whom she affectionately called Yo-Yo.

Her passions included writing and her work in public health and women’s issues, Lucid said. Justin-Jinich volunteered at various Planned Parenthood offices in her home state and in the area.

“She was the most giving and loving person I have ever known,” Lucid said. “I’ll remember her loyalty and her warm smile whenever I saw her and her very funny voices she would make with me.”

From miles away, you can see it coming, can’t you?

Ryan La Rochelle, 23, of Boston, said he was shocked. He knew Justin-Jinich from Westtown School, a small boarding institution in southeastern Pennsylvania they attended as high schoolers. La Rochelle learned about her death from the media.

“She was a very beautiful and kind girl,” La Rochelle said. “I have no idea how something like this could have happened.”

After [Jen] Bromley, the owner of Silk Waxing Spa, learned that Justin-Jinich had been shot, she closed the shop and drove to Middlesex Hospital with her cousin, another friend of Justin-Jinich’s who attends Wesleyan. They thought she was still alive. But as they pulled into the hospital parking lot, the cousin’s boyfriend called with the news.

“I’ve been crying and distraught all day,” Bromley said Wednesday evening. “She’s a really happy, really smart girl. Really intellectual…I can’t imagine why any one person would dislike her and want her dead.”

Beneath the simple laments, you can feel issues of class, feminism, the meaning of beauty and the same old male entitlement crap simmering until it boiled over. Nobody understands. Nobody thought anything of it. Of course, no one understands. Until our hearts break, this stuff is barely worth a mention.

[1]Demetra George, Mysteries of the Dark Moon, The Healing Power of the Dark Goddess, Harper San Francisco, 1992.

Nothing To Hold

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Raw Story, which for some reason reads like the Onion today:

UPDATE: Sen. Arlen Specter says he “conclusively misspoke” in his Times interview, after being asked about the quotation by Congressional Quarterly late Tuesday. “In the swirl of moving from one caucus to another, I have to get used to my new teammates,” he said. “I’m ordinarily pretty correct in what I say. I’ve made a career of being precise. I conclusively misspoke.”

Who he’s backing now? “I’m looking for more Democratic members. Nothing personal.”

Wheee!
Norm Coleman, R-Fantasyland, subject of Arlen’s invigorating blunder. See more obstructionist Republican clowns here.

You see, Arlen Spector switched teams but forgot that meant changing his team jersey. It caused quite a ruckus among people playing for Arlen’s new team. Even the cheerleaders were confused and, let me tell you, gum and condoms took flight. Oh, the humidity!

Anyway, I enjoyed that. A showing of true colors is comedy gold. But wait, there’s more! Am I dreaming?

Additionally, Democrats took away Specter’s seniority on the committees he serves on, the Washington Post reports:

In a unanimous voice vote, the Senate approved a resolution that added Specter to the Democratic side of the dais on the five committees on which he serves, an expected move that gives Democrats larger margins on key panels such as Judiciary and Appropriations.

But Democrats placed Specter in one of the two most junior slots on each of the five committees for the remainder of this Congress, which goes through December 2010. Democrats have suggested that they will consider revisiting Specter’s seniority claim at the committee level only after the midterm elections next year.

Senate Democrats did the right thing? There must be some mistake! No, says the Washington Post:

The Senate last night stripped Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) of his seniority on committees, a week after the 29-year veteran of the chamber quit the Republican Party to join the Democrats.

In announcing his move across the aisle last week, Specter asserted that Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) had assured him he would retain his seniority in the Senate and on the five committees on which he serves. Specter’s tenure ranked him ahead of all but seven Democrats.

Instead, though, on a voice vote last night, the Senate approved a resolution that made Specter the most junior Democrat on four committees for the remainder of this Congress. (He will rank second from last on the fifth, the Special Committee on Aging.) Reid himself read the resolution on the Senate floor, underscoring the reversal.

Democrats have suggested that they will consider revisiting Specter’s seniority claim at the committee level only after next year’s midterm elections.

I’m doing the Happy Dance! For once, the Democrats weren’t out-maneuvered in an easily foreseeable maneuvering!

The loss of seniority could prove costly to Specter in his campaign to win reelection in 2010, denying him the ability to distinguish himself from a newcomer in his ability to claim key positions.

Specter said last week that becoming chairman of the Appropriations Committee was a personal goal of his, and his Senate service seemed to put him in position to be the third-ranking Democrat there. Now, though, he will not hold even an Appropriations subcommittee chairmanship in 2011 – a critical foothold Specter has used to send billions of dollars to Pennsylvania.

I almost feel sorry for the selfish old coot. He’s the girl at the prom wearing a puce lace creation and tennis shoes. So yes, let’s dance.

But Really, I’m Not Actually Your Friend

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The physically delicate older gentleman seated eight feet behind me in my office at the unnamed university has been experiencing gastic dismay on a daily basis. At 1:30 each afternoon, I email Lupe.

Tata: PU! Again! It can’t be a surprise. Why doesn’t he Beano so there’ll be no gas?
Lupe: I can’t breathe!
Tata: YOU can’t breathe?! Ellen just walked by, and in accordance with Smelt It vs. Dealt It, she didn’t look at me but plainly thinks I have the stomach funk!
Lupe: You’re killing me!
Tata: Do you know how much havoc I could wreak in the library with a cigarette lighter right now?

I hate to kick a sick guy when he’s down, but after a week and a half of sitting in someone else’s toxic cloud I’ve had enough. And when I say that, I live downwind of a garbage dump visible from space, and I’ve had enough! Today, I brought in a Glade air freshener so my office doesn’t smell like farts, it smells like apples, cinnamon and farts.

Tomorrow, I’m spraying him with Oust.

So the Room Must Listen To Me

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Tata: Okay okay okay okay-
Daria: I’m sitting down.
Tata: Okay okay okay we went to Lowe’s and bought peat moss and two bags of manure –
Daria:Those are words you’ll never hear me say: I went to Lowe’s for two bags of manure.
Tata: I could swear I just heard that. So we’re walking out in the parking lot in a pouring rain and Pete tosses two bags of manure in the trunk of my car and I stomp around to the passenger door, open it and sit down. I thought I was sitting on my keys so I jump out of the car and it still hurts and I slap my pants where it hurts and omigod a yellow jacket falls on the ground –
Daria: Where’d you get that?
Tata: Lowe’s, obviously. So obviously I freaked –
Daria: Obviously! Daddy was deathly allergic to wasps –
Tata: I yelped that! If I have trouble breathing take me straight to the hospital!
Daria: Did you?
Tata: Well, no. I was yelping, what with the inhaling and exhaling. So there I was, freaking out, and Pete was holding the mooshed yellow jacket and asking, “Should I hold onto this?” and I was like –
Daria: Did you take the yellow jacket back to Lowe’s?
Tata: I should have returned that and claimed it was already broken but I was thinking Omigod, I cannot die from bee bites. So I said, No. Jesus! You’ll need both hands if you have to carry me into the Emergency Room. The freaking thing stung me four times and I have a crazy strip of swelling down my left thigh.
Daria: I might have to Facebook this: Today, in a pounding rain, my sister got bee-stung on her butt.

She Is Looking At Me As If I Am

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This morning, Pete and I slept in. This is code for “we kicked the cats out of our bedroom and played naked Parchesi,” but don’t tell anyone because having a secret language makes us cool. We are cool! So Pete and I slept in, then made breakfast, then fed the varmints, then we went grocery shopping. Stop & Shop recently opened another store in our 49 square mile hometown so the yuppies could have their own market, and good for them, since they can bite me. This means the Stop & Shop near our house, which is full of nothing, and the Stop & Shop where there used to be woods, which is full of yuppies – neither of those is full of us. We went to the one where the movie theater was when we were teenagers and oh thank Vishnu bad kids didn’t burn that down.

All of which reminds me of sausage. I can’t explain that.

Anyway, we bought some bottles of Terracycle Worm Poop besides the groceries and drove home on two wheels in time to get ready for work at the family stores. While I was waiting for Pete to find a shirt he wanted to wear to sell toys I skipped outside with a container of compost and found my neighbor contemplating a shovel and a relocated tree without a clear crime scene. You have not lived until you’ve dressed for work and spinning the composter, I’ll just tell you that now. It’s just a good thing I look great in minced orange rinds.

Somehow, I found a minute to pour Worm Poop on the blueberry bush, and, pardon you, I am not speaking in code. You didn’t suppose I’d sink to fertilizer jokes, did you?

Please Don’t Stay In Touch

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Uh oh! California’s scorned pageant princess is p-p-pissed!

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Miss California Carrie Prejean, who declared her opposition to same-sex marriage during the Miss USA pageant, will star in a new $1.5 million ad campaign funded by the National Organization for Marriage.

The organization has scheduled a press conference with Prejean in Washington on Thursday to unveil the new ad, called “No Offense.”

Prejean was roasted by same-sex marriage advocates after she stood up for what she called “opposite marriage” (marriage between a man and a woman) when responding to a question from celebrity blogger and pageant judge Perez Hilton.

Prejean has also become a fresh-faced standard-bearer for the same-sex marriage opponents, who have rallied to her defense.

“She is attacked viciously for having the courage to speak up for her truth and her values,” the National Organization for Marriage said in a press release. “But Carrie’s courage inspired a whole nation and a whole generation of young people because she chose to risk the Miss USA crown rather than be silent about her deepest moral values.”

According to the group, the ad will call “gay marriage advocates to account for their unwillingness to debate the real issue: gay marriage has consequences.”

Indeed – gay marriage does have consequences. One day, you’re dancing in the lesbian bar, minding your own gay business. You knock back a few drinks, take home a hot chick, wake up and count how many fingers you’re holding up. Next thing you know, she’s like all, “Baby, baby, baby, we’re gonna have a baby,” and you’re all, “I’m smoke, I’m history, I’m Casper.” No wait, that’s those icky straight people. I can’t even think about them having sex! Ewww!

I’m an unabashed advocate of same-sex marriage rights. I won’t debate it because there’s nothing to debate. There is no compromise position. I should have the right to marry a man or a woman. I should have the right to enter into this contract with the person of my choosing, as long as that person chooses me too; the same rights, for everyone, without exception. But Carrie Prejean, the sum of whose life experience can be charitably described as more limited than a veal cow’s, thinks she knows better.

Huh. Take it away, Lily Allen –

You Know You’re Full Of Wish

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Photo: Yale Joel. Life Magazine. 1962.

I’m at a bit of a loss for words today. Fortunately, Minstrel Boy said everything yesterday. These words should haunt you:

It’s easy to tell yourself that “it’s not my job or my business,” or, “It’s more important to move forward, this isn’t the time for looking back.”

I always have to look back. Too much of what I see I don’t like. We cannot afford to make our national memory like mine.

Investigate the crimes. Bring the criminals to account. Give them the fair treatment and trial that they denied to so many. If convicted give them a just punishment under the law. Then give them a decent incarceration. Fuck dude, go fucking nuts and pardon some of the bastards. I won’t care. Pardon means that they have been made to accept that they broke the law and did wrong.

The price of doing nothing is too fucking high.

In light so bright, it’s easy to feel the sun in one’s eyes.

And At Keeping Things Vague

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Photo of bathroom in darkness, as seen by leaping pussycats whose cameras have a flash.

I.
Last night, an unusual noise woke Pete from a sound sleep. He sat up in a panic, muttering, “What? What?” Then his head cleared and he realized one of the cats had flushed the toilet. We suspect Topaz, whom we often spy figuring out how some contraption contrapts – or maybe the giant kitten made a sloppy leap for the window sill from the toilet tank.

II.
This morning, I’d taken the day of from work to transplant lettuces and tomatoes, to get some rest and bask in the sunshine. During my drive to physical therapy at 7:15 a.m, Matt Pinfield played Guns N’ Roses’ Used To Love Her. I said, “Fuck you, Matt,” and shut off the radio. Just after 9, Pete and I drove to the eye doctor’s office in our home town and Matt played Under My Thumb. I said, “Fuck you, Matt, we get it. You hate women. Women get the message.” When he lived here, I used to meet Matt Pinfield in that grocery store four blocks from my current house. If I ever see him there again, I will personally fling the first cream pie.

III.
My grandparents had a cat that potty-trained himself. His name was Gato, and he was a genius. He could open doors with his paws. One day, my grandfather opened the bathroom door and found Gato reading the paper and smoking a Lucky. I’m kidding, of course. Gato was doing a crossword.